Thirty-one Years!

I'm sure there is a scanned picture here somewhere of that day thirty-one years ago. Back when we were delightfully naive newlyweds. The world was such a simple place then ah not really. I'm thankful that there was no Hurricane Irma that year because we went to Florida for our honeymoon. Some day we should go back. We keep saying that kind of thing, "one of these days we will go away by ourselves for a week".  Maybe next year.

One year we found ourselves in China adding a son to our family- that was seven years ago. One year we went to  VA for an Empowered to Connect seminar by Karyn Purvis and team. One year we went away overnight and took a two-year-old with us. One year we traveled the New England states for a whole week and one year we went to Williamsburg for a weekend. The last two were the PC (pre-children) years.

What did we do this year? The weather was influenced by Irma so we couldn't do anything outside and our time was influenced by the fact that the internet-upgrade guy was coming "between 12 and 4 PM".  Three of my conversations with the internet people told me that "no one needs to be home". The most recent two calls told me that a person over the age of 18 must be home. So which is it?

With that in mind we decided to watch a movie that I had heard so much about- "War Room". I realized again how powerful is prayer. With seven children there is a never-ending reason to pray.  I need to remember to pray specifically for my husband too. Yesterday he came home from work and I could sense that he had something on his mind, but the kitchen was full of people. He grabbed some clothes and said, "I'm heading for the shower, I was cleaning up a mess for the last 2-1/2 hours." He is a machine operator in a woodworking plant and he is on the first aid team there. My brain added 2+2 and figured he wasn't cleaning up saw dust. I know from my own experience you need to talk that stuff through. You also need God's help in the moment. We managed to discuss it later and again today.

 I also know that he takes very seriously the upkeep of our family. I saw a little note that came from his work shirt pocket.

Van $ 20,000
Roof $7000
Kitchen $2000

He's planning and maybe worrying about the future. Husbands need prayers--prayers for wisdom, endurance, and for knees that stay stable. (His knee had an MRI and he has a tear in the meniscus. That wasn't on his bucket list.)  My job is to be content, helpful and pray...short list that.

Lunch? Oh yeah, even though Facebook friends gave us many great suggestions, we headed to a small Mexican restaurant that is in the area, it's not Chi-Chi's but then nothing is anymore.

Got home and a few minutes later we had a phone call from "Mike" from the phone company, just checking if someone was going to be home because he was coming to upgrade our internet. There's our answer, you do need to be home. Very glad hubby was home too because "Mike" needed to run new phone lines because our antique (over 30 years is antique in the electronics world) wires would not handle the new blazing fast internet we were about to get (50mbps- well actually 49.49- for those who wonder about such things)

Sometime I need to write down the stuff I'm learning in Chemistry class and about down-sizing (we just helped son#1 move) and camping in the living room just so I remember one day that we weren't terribly boring.

and then there's grandparenting :)